Today
Jews around the world are gathering to celebrate the
most holy day on the Jewish calendar. It is called
Yom Kippur, or the Day of
Atonement.

At synagogues everywhere
worshippers have been reciting the so-called Kol
Nidre prayer. Taken from the first two Hebrew
words of the prayer, "Kol Nidre" means "all vows."

The goyim*
are told that Yom Kippur is an occasion when pious, saintly
Jews approach their Maker in a penitential rite to beg his
forgiveness for wrongs they have committed during the past
year.

RUBBISH!
The occasion is nothing less than a time when Jews ask for
and receive absolution for all the sins and wrongs they
are about to commitIN THE COMING YEAR! In
so doing, they cut a lawyer's deal with their god (whom they
call YHWH, or Yahweh) that gives them an exemption
in advance from all wrongdoing.

Here is the actual
text of this outrageous "prayer":

"All vows, prohibitions, oaths,
consecrations or equivalent terms that we may vow, swear,
consecrate, or prohibit upon ourselves from this Yom Kippur
until the next Yom Kippur, may it come upon us for
goodregarding them all, we repudiate them
henceforth.

They all will be abandoned, cancelled, null and void; they will be
without power and without standing. Our vows shall not be
valid vows; our prohibitions shall not be valid
prohibitions; and our oaths shall not be valid
oaths."

That's pretty clear,
unambiguous language. What we have here, in fact, is
nothing less than a one-year, renewable license to lie,
cheat and steal with impunity, all based on a decree from
the Jews' so-called holy book, which says:

"And he who desires that none of his vows
made during the year shall be valid, let him stand at the
beginning of the year and declare, 'Every vow which I make
in the future shall be null.'"

(Babylonian
Talmud, Tractate Nedarim 23a &
23b)

Among those who
are reciting the Kol Nidre oath at this
time are Jewish politicians, lawyers, judges,
corporate executives, businessmen, journalists and public
officials. It should be noted that any oaths they may
take to uphold and defend the Constitution or otherwise tell
the truth are, as of tonight, "abandoned, cancelled, null
and void" and rendered "without power and without
standing."

"What the American Jew needs to develop is the habit of
self-criticism. If the spokesmen of the Jewish people would
devote one-half the energy they now expend in answering attacks
to attacking the evils that stare everyone in the face, they
would make a real contribution to American life. But judged by
their public utterances, they seem to be supersensitive to
trivial prejudice in non-Jews and extraordinarily insensitive to
the faults of Jews. They are hypochondriac and morbidly
defensive about their critics, and indulgent and complacent
about what the Jewish people is and does. Races, not cursed with
a sense of inferiority, do not shrink from criticism. They
initiate it."

— Walter Lippmann, in The American Hebrew.

"I have looked this year and last for something in your
paper about the prayer which the Jews say at their New Year.
But you say nothing. Can it be you have not heard of the Kol
Nidre?"

"Lately in three cities I have heard a Jewish religious
hymn sung in the public theaters. This was in New York,
Detroit and Chicago. Each time the program said 'by
request.' Who makes the request? What is the meaning of this
kind of propaganda? The name of the hymn is 'Eli.'"

The Jewish year just passed has been described by a Jewish
writer in the Jewish Daily News as the Year of Chaos. The
writer is apparently intelligent enough to ascribe this
condition to something besides "anti-Semitism." He says, "the
thought that there is something wrong in Jewish life will not
down," and when he describes the situation in the Near East, he
says, "The Jew himself is stirring the mess." He indicts the
Jewish year 5681 on 12 counts, among them being, "mismanagement
in Palestine," "engaging in internal warfare," "treason to the
Jewish people," "selfishness," "self-delusion." "The Jewish
people is a sick people," cries the writer, and when he utters a
comfortable prophecy for the year 5682, it is not in the terms
of Judah but in the terms of "Kol Yisroel" — All Israel — the
terms of a larger and more inclusive unity which gives Judah its
own place, and its own place only, in the world. The Jewish
people are sick, to be sure, and the disease is the fallacy of
superiority, with its consequent "foreign policy" against the
world.

When Jewish writers describe the year 5681 as the Year of
Chaos, it is an unconscious admission that the Jewish people are
ripening for a change of attitude. The "chaos" is among the
leaders; it involves the plans which are based on the old false
assumptions. The Jewish people are waiting for leaders who can
emancipate them from the thralldom of their self-seeking masters
in the religious and political fields. The enemies of the
emancipation or Judah are those who profit by Judah's bondage,
and these are the groups that follow the American Jewish
Committee and the political rabbis. When a true Jewish prophet
arises — and he should arise in the United States — there will
be a great sweeping away of the selfish, heartless Jewish
leaders, a general desertion of the Jewish idea of "getting"
instead of "making," and an emergence of the true idea submerged
so long.

There will also be a separation among the Jews themselves.
They are not all Jews who call themselves so today. There is a
Tartar strain in so-called Jewry that is absolutely incompatible
with true Israelitish raciality; there are other alien strains
which utterly differ from the true Jewish; but until now these
strains have been held because the Jewish leaders needed vast
hordes of low-type people to carry out their world designs. But
the Jew himself is recognizing the presence of an alien element;
and that is the first step in a movement which will place the
Jewish Question on quite another basis.

What the Jews of the United States are coming to think is
indicated by this letter — one among many (the writer is a Jew):

"Gentlemen:

"'Because you believe in a good cause,' said Dr. Johnson,
'is no reason why you should feel called upon to defend it,
for by your manner of defense you may do your cause much
harm.'

"The above applying to me I will only say that I have
received the books you sent me and read both with much
interest.

"You are rendering the Jews a very great service, that of
saving them from themselves.

"It takes courage, and nerve, and intelligence to do and
pursue such a work, and I admire you for it."

The letter was accompanied by a check which ordered THE
DEARBORN INDEPENDENT sent to the address of another who
bears a distinctively Jewish name.

It is very clear that unity is not to be won by the
truth-teller soft-pedaling or suppressing his truth, nor by the
truth-hearer strenuously denying that the truth is true, but by
both together honoring the truth in telling and in acknowledging
it. When the Jews see this, they can take over the work of
truth-telling and carry it on themselves. These articles have as
their only purpose: First, that the Jews may see the truth for
themselves about themselves; second, that non-Jews may see the
fallacy of the present Jewish idea and use enough common sense
to cease falling victims to it. With both Jews and non-Jews
seeing their error, the way is opened for cooperation instead of
the kind of competition (not commercial, but moral) which has
resulted so disastrously to Jewish false ambitions these long
centuries.

Now, as to the questions at the beginning of this article:
THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT has heretofore scrupulously avoided
even the appearance of criticizing the Jew for his religion. The
Jew's religion, as most people think of it, is unobjectionable.
But when he has carried on campaigns against the Christian
religion, and when in every conceivable manner he thrusts his
own religion upon the public from the stage of theaters and in
other public places, he has himself to blame if the public asks
questions.

It is quite impossible to select the largest theater in the
United States, place the Star of David high in a beautiful stage
heavens above all flags and other symbols, apostrophize it for a
week with all sorts of wild prophecy and all sorts of silly
defiance of the world, sing hymns to it and otherwise adore it,
without arousing curiosity. Yet the Jewish theatrical managers,
with no protest from the Anti-Defamation Committee, have done
this on a greater or smaller scale in many cities. To say it is
meaningless is to use words lightly.

The "Kol Nidre" is a Jewish prayer, named from its opening
words, "All vows," (kol nidre). It is based on the declaration
of the Talmud:

"He who wishes that his vows and oaths shall have no
value, stand up at the beginning of the year and say: 'All
vows which I shall make during the year shall be of no
value.'"

It would be pleasant to be able to declare that this is
merely one of the curiosities of the darkness which covers the
Talmud, but the fact is that "Kol Nidre" is not only an ancient
curiosity; it is also a modern practice. In the volume of
revised "Festival Prayers," published in 1919 by the
Hebrew Publishing Company, New York, the prayer appears in its
fullness:

"All vows, obligations, oaths or anathemas, pledges of
all names, which we have vowed, sworn, devoted, or bound
ourselves to, from this day of atonement, until the next day
of atonement (whose arrival we hope for in happiness) we
repent, aforehand, of them all, they shall all be deemed
absolved, forgiven, annulled, void and made of no effect;
they shall not be binding, not have any power; the vows
shall not be reckoned vows, the obligations shall not be
obligatory, nor the oaths considered as oaths."

If this strange statement were something dug out of the misty
past, it would scarcely merit serious attention, but as being
part of a revised Jewish prayer book printed in the
United States in 1919, and as being one of the high points of
the Jewish religious celebration of the New Year, it cannot be
lightly dismissed after attention has once been called to it.

Indeed, the Jews do not deny it. Early in the year, when a
famous Jewish violinist landed in New York after a triumphant
tour abroad, he was besieged by thousands of his East Side
admirers, and was able to quiet their cries only when he took
his violin and played the "Kol Nidre." Then the people wept as
exiles do at the sound of the songs of the homeland.

In that incident the reader will see that (hard as it is for
the non-Jew to understand it!) there is a deep-rooted,
sentimental regard for the "Kol Nidre" which makes it one of the
most sacred of possessions to the Jew. Indefensibly immoral as
the "Kol Nidre" is, utterly destructive of all social
confidence, yet the most earnest efforts of a few really
spiritual Jews have utterly failed to remove it from the prayer
books, save in a few isolated instances. The music of the "Kol
Nidre" is famous and ancient. One has only to refer to the
article "Kol Nidre" in the Jewish Encyclopedia to see the
predicament of the modern Jew: he cannot deny; he cannot defend;
he cannot renounce. The "Kol Nidre" is here, and remains.

If the prayer were a request for forgiveness for the broken
vows of the past, normal human beings could quite understand it.
Vows, promises, obligations and pledges are broken, sometimes by
weakness of will to perform them, sometimes by reason of
forgetfulness, sometimes by sheer inability to do the thing we
thought we could do. Human experience is neither Jew nor Gentile
in that respect.

But the prayer is a holy advance notice, given in the secrecy
of the synagogue, that no promise whatever shall be binding, and
more than not being binding is there and then violated before it
is ever made.

The scope of the prayer is "from this day of atonement, until
the next day of atonement."

The prayer looks wholly to the future, "we repent, aforehand,
of them all."

The prayer breaks down the common ground of confidence
between men — "the vows shall not be reckoned vows; the
obligations shall not be obligatory, nor the oaths considered as
oaths."

It requires no argument to show that if this prayer be really
the rule of faith and conduct for the Jews who utter it, the
ordinary social and business relations are impossible to
maintain with them.

It should be observed that there is no likeness here with
Christian "hypocrisy," so-called. Christian "hypocrisy" arises
mostly from men holding higher ideals than they are able to
attain to, and verbally extolling higher principles than their
conduct illustrates. That is, to use Browning's figure, the
man's reach exceeds his grasp; as it always does, where the man
is more than a clod.

But "Kol Nidre" is in the opposite direction. It recognizes
by inference that in the common world of men, in the common
morality of the street and the mart, a promise passes current as
a promise, a pledge as a pledge, an obligation as an obligation
— that there is a certain social currency given to the
individual's mere word on the assumption that its quality is
kept good by straight moral intention. And it makes provision to
drop below that level.

How did the "Kol Nidre" come into existence? Is it the cause
or the effect of that untrustworthiness with which the Jew has
been charged for centuries?

Its origin is not from the Bible but from Babylon, and the
mark of Babylon is more strongly impressed on the Jew than is
the mark of the Bible. "Kol Nidre" is Talmudic and finds its
place among many other dark things in that many-volumed and
burdensom invention. If the "Kol Nidre" ever was a backward look
over the failures of the previous year, it very early became a
forward look to the deliberate deceptions of the coming year.

Many explanations have been made in an attempt to account for
this. Each explanation is denied and disproved by those who
favor some other explanation. The commonest of all is this, and
it rings in the over-worked note of "persecution": The Jews were
so hounded and harried by the bloodthirsty Christians, and so
brutally and viciously treated in the name of loving Jesus (the
terms are borrowed from Jewish writers) that they were compelled
by wounds and starvation and the fear of death to renounce their
religion and to vow that thereafter they would take the once
despised Jesus for their Messiah. Therefore, say the Jewish
apologists, knowing that during the ensuing year the terrible,
bloodthirsty Christians would force the poor Jews to take
Christian vows, the Jews in advance announced to God that all
the promises they would make on that score would be lies. They
would say what the Christians forced them to say, but they would
not mean or intend one word of it.

That is the best explanation of all. Its weakness is that it
assumes the "Kol Nidre" to have been coincident with times of
"persecution," especially in Spain. Unfortunately for this
explanation, the "Kol Nidre" is found centuries before that,
when the Jews were under no pressure.

In a refreshingly frank article in the Cleveland Jewish
World for October 11, the insufficiency of the above
explanation is so clearly set forth that a quotation is made:

"Many learned men want to have it understood that the Kol
Nidre dates from the Spanish Inquisition, it having become
necessary on account of all sorts of persecution and
inflictions to adopt the Christian religion for appearances'
sake. Then the Jews in Spain, gathering in cellars to
celebrate the Day of Atonement and pardon, composed a prayer
that declared of no value all vows and oaths that they would
be forced to make during the year. . . .

"The learned men say, moreover, that in remembrance of
those days when hundreds and thousands of Maranos (secret
Jews) were dragged out of the cellars and were tortured with
all kinds of torment, the Jews in all parts of the world
have adopted the Kol Nidre as a token of faithfulness to the
faith and as self-sacrifice for the faith.

"These assertions are not correct. The fact is
that the formula of Kol Nidre was composed and said on the
night of Yom Kippur quite a time earlier than the period of
the Spanish Inquisition. We find, for instance, a formula to
invalidate vows on Yom Kippur in the prayer book of the
Rabbi Amram Goun who lived in the ninth century, about five
hundred years before the Spanish Inquisition; although Rabbi
Amram's forumla is not 'Kol Nidre' but 'Kol Nidrim' ('All
vows and oaths which we shall swear from Yom Kippurim to Yom
Kippurim will return to us void.') . . ."

The form of the prayer in the matter of its age may be in
dispute; but back in the ancient and modern Talmud is the
authorization of the practice: "He who wishes that his vows
and oaths shall have no value, stand up at the beginning of
the year and say: 'All vows which I shall make during the
year shall be of no value.'"

That answers our reader's question. This article does not say
that all Jews thus deliberately assassinate their pledged word.
It does say that both the Talmud and the prayer book permit them
to do so, and tell them how it may be accomplished.

Now, as to the Jewish religious hymn which is being sung "by
request" throughout the country: the story of it is soon told.

The name of the hymn is "Eli, Eli"; its base is the first
verse of the Twenty-second Psalm, known best in Christian
countries as the Cry of Christ on the Cross.

It is being used by Jewish vaudeville managers as their
contribution to the pro-Jewish campaign which the Jew-controlled
theater is flinging into the faces of the public, from stage and
motion picture screen. It is an incantation designed to inflame
the lower classes of Jews against the people, and intensify the
racial consciousness of those hordes of Eastern Jews who have
flocked here.

At the instigation of the New York Kehillah, "Eli, Eli" has
for a long time been sung at the ordinary run of performances in
vaudeville and motion picture houses, and the notice "By
Request" is usually a bald lie. It should be "By Order." The
"request" is from Jewish headquarters, which has ordered the
speeding up of Jewish propaganda. The situation of the theater
now is that American audiences are paying at the box office for
the privilege of hearing Jews advertise the things they want
non-Jews to think about them.

If even a vestige of decency, or the slightest appreciation
of good taste remained, the Jews who control the theaters would
see that the American public must eventually gag on such things.
When two Jewish comedians who have been indulging in always
vulgar and often indecent antics, appear before the drop curtain
and sing the Yiddish incantation, "Eli, Eli," which, of course,
is incomprehensible to the major part of the audience, the
Jewish element always betrays a high pitch of excitement. They
understand the game that is being played: the "Gentiles" are
being flayed to their face, and they don't know it; as when a
Yiddish comedian pours out shocking invectives on the name of
Jesus Christ, and "gets away with it," the Jewish portion of his
audience howling with delight, and the "boob Gentiles" looking
serenely on and feeling it is to be polite to laugh and applaud
too!

This Yiddish chant is the rallying cry of race hatred which
is being spread abroad by orders of the Jewish leaders. You, if
you are a theatergoer, help to pay the expense of getting
yourself roundly damned. The Kehillah and the American Jewish
Committee, which for more than ten years have been driving all
mention of Christianity out of public life, under their slogan
"This Is Not a Christian Country," are spreading their own type
of Judaism everywhere with insolence unparalleled.

"Eli, Eli" is not a religious hymn! It is a racial war cry.
In the low cafés of New York, where Bolshevik Jews hang out,
"Eli, Eli" is their song. It is the Marseillaise of Jewish
solidarity. It has become the fanatical chant of all Jewish
Bolshevik clubs; it is constantly heard in Jewish coffee houses
and cabarets where emotional Russian and Polish Jews — all
enemies to all government — shout the words amid torrential
excitement. When you see the hymn in point you are utterly
puzzled to understand the excitement it arouses.

And this rallying cry has now been obtruded into the midst of
the theatrical world.

The term "incantation" here used is used advisedly. The term
is used by Kurt Schindler, who adapted the Yiddish hymn to
American use. And its effect is that of an incantation.

"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
By day and night I only yearn and pray,
Anxiously keeping our Holy Scriptures
And praying, Save us, save us once again!
For the sake of our fathers and our fathers' fathers!

"Listen to my prayer and to my lamenting,
For only Thou canst help, Thou, God, alone,
For it is said, 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord is Our God,
The Lord is One!'"

The words of the hymn are so much resembling a lament that
they strangely contrast with the spirit which the hymn itself
seems to arouse; its mournful melody inspires a very different
spirit among the Jewish hearers than the same sort of melody
would inspire among other people. Those who have heard its
public rendition can better understand how a hymn of such
utterly quiet and resigned tone could be the wild rage of the
anarchists of the East Side coffee houses.

The motive, of course, for the singing of the hymn is the
reference to non-Jewish people.

"With fire and flame THEY have burnt us, everywhere
THEY have shamed and derided us?" Who are "they"? Who but
the goyim, the Christians who all unsuspectingly sit by and who
are so affected by the Jewish applause that they applaud too!
Truly, in one way of looking at it, Jews have a right to despise
the "gentiles."

"THEY have burnt us; THEY have shamed us," but
we the poor Jews, have been harmless all the while, none among
us daring to depart from the Law! That is the meaning of "Eli,
Eli." That is why, in spite of its words of religious
resignation, it becomes a rallying cry. "They" are all wrong;
"we" are all right.

It is possible, of course that right-minded Jews do not
approve all this. They may disapprove of "Kol Nidre" and they
may resent the use which the Jewish leaders are making of "Eli,
Eli." Let us at least credit some Jews with both these
attitudes. But they do nothing about it. These same Jews,
however, will go to the public library of their town and put the
fear of political or business reprisal in the hearts of the
Library Board if they do not instantly remove THE DEARBORN
INDEPENDENT from the library; these same Jews will form
committees to coerce mayors of cities into issuing illegal
orders which cannot be enforced; these same Jews will give
commands to the newspapers under their patronage or control —
they are indeed mighty and active in the affairs of the
non-Jews. But when it is a matter of keeping "Eli, Eli" out of
the theater, or the "Kol Nidre" out of the mouths of those who
thus plan a whole year of deception "aforehand," these same Jews
are very inactive and apparently very powerless.

The Anti-Defamation Committee would better shut up shop until
it can show either the will or the ability to bring pressure to
bear on its own people. Coercion of the rest of the people is
rapidly growing less and less possible.

The "Kol Nidre" is far from being the worst counsel in the
Talmud; "Eli, Eli" is far from being the worst anti-social
misuse of apparently holy things. But it will remain the policy
of THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT, for the present at least, to
let all such matters alone except, as in the present case, where
the number of the inquiries indicates that a knowledge of the
facts has been had at other sources. In many instances, what our
inquirers heard was worse than is stated here, so that this
article is by way of being a service to the inquirer to prevent
his being misled, and to the Jew to prevent misrepresentation.